Sonic and Sega Retro Message Board: Overlord - Viewing Profile - Sonic and Sega Retro Message Board

So the other game announced today was Mario & Sonic 2014, the game that no-one saw coming at all. Honest. =P



What do we think about another title in the series, the first in HD?

OK, so I have a trip coming up in a few months where I'm going to the US for about a week (don't panic, I fully intend to have internet & board access while I'm there, so you're all safe =P), and I intend to take my mobile phone with me that I bought when I visited South Africa last Autumn - specifically, that's this thing:


http://www.gsmarena....ot_217-3814.php

First off, some shit I've worked out that I'm fairly confident I'm right on:

* The USA has 4 main mobile phone networks, not counting those that leech off others' equipment: Verizon Wireless, Sprint, AT&T Mobility, & T-Mobile USA. Of these 4, Verizon & Sprint are both useless as they use the CDMA standard that next to no-one else on Earth uses (and indeed those that do (including these two) are phasing out under the 4G standards anyway for LTE, which is GSM based). AT&T and T-Mobile both use proper GSM, therefore I will need to use one of these two.

* Wikipedia says that AT&T does 850MHz & 1900MHz for GSM/EDGE (2G) and UMTS/HSPA (3G - not that this is relevant, my travel phone is 2G only). T-Mobile does the same, but has to roam on AT&T's network to do 850. My phone does quad-band GSM 850 / 1900 / 900 / 1800, so as I understand it, I should be fine with either of these networks. (For the record, it seems only AT&T currently has any sort of 4G layout - 700, 1700 & 2100MHz, where T-Mobile is scheduled to roll out just 1700MHz at some point during this next year).


Now. Bearing in mind we're talking about a country whose mobile networks are so customer-unfriendly that they recently made unlocking your contract phone illegal, I have a couple of questions for locals who might know the answers of these - and if they vary state-by-state, the relevant ones will be MO (most important), FL, NV (both somewhat important), and TX (least important, any phones in it will be there a matter of hours at most):

* Is it even possible to buy pre-paid SIM cards that you slap into a phone and then just work, with a US phone number, as a UK national? (I assume the foreigner bit isn't the block as I did exactly this in South Africa, but with the sillyness of the above regulation you never know)
* Assuming that it is, what sort of prices will I be looking at for buying a bog-standard calls-and-texts-only SIM card, to slap straight into my own phone, with maybe $10 or $20 of credit? (I do not care for data necessarily, my phone can't do it anyway. However that might be important for someone else I know who's going)
* How much is a typical phone call from a mobile to a land-line in the US from AT&T & T-Mobile? How much are domestic texts - and arguably more importantly, international ones? How about mobile-to-mobile - on the same network and to other networks?
* Who has better coverage, AT&T or T-Mobile?
* Are there any other pitfalls of US mobile phone networks I should be aware of?

Thanks in advance!

OK so as you all know I recently took a trip to the southern hemisphere on business, but while down there was able to do some very very brief research into South Africa's gaming setup - figured it was worth a topic just so the knowledge is in one spot. I've widened the scope of the thread to the entire continent because (a) I doubt that there'll be enough in any one nation for a huge amount of info and (b) we know very little about Sega's operations in the entire continent as a whole.

Right, on to my information I found.

I only had a chance to see modern consoles really - Wii, PS2, PS3, 360, PSP, Vita, DS, 3DS. All of these in the 3 or 4 places I looked without exception were PAL copies with PEGI stickers - likely imported stock from the UK (and maybe some from the Netherlands?), moreso as I saw BBFC ratings on at least one title and all the boxes I saw were in English. I did check the coloured stripes on the Nintendo boxes and saw green, light green, yellow and purple all used.

Where shit gets interesting was that all aforementioned PAL games were stickered over with their local rating system: fpb.



Of all places, the only sensible description I found of how they work is on Nintendo Europe's site: http://www.nintendo....rating_954.html

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These stack, eg I saw a 10LV sticker. Here are a few example logos as they appear stickered on games:



This isn't all the levels used, as mentioned I saw a 10.

Sega titles: I saw/remembered not that many (I was somewhat rushed at the main games shop I ended up in, and had someone with me at the time). As such, here's the entire list of ones I know:

Mario & Sonic 2012 [3DS]: PG
Bleach: The 3rd Phantom [DS]: 13V
Sonic Unleashed [PS2]: PGV(? This one is from memory rather than a written note)

Other relevant fpb links: http://www.fpb.org.z...isplay-of-games

Any further research can proceed here, though the main problem will be finding a nice list of rated titles as fpb.org.za doesn't appear to have one.

Figured I'd stick a thread here so everyone's on the same page with regards to ordering tickets, bearing in mind how small the window of opportunity was last year (like, 5 hours):

http://www.summerofs...ion-and-tickets

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This was posted 6 days ago - only noticed it today. =P

Remember that #retro discussion on November the 30th 2010, that opened the topic I posted last year for GHZ Adventure? Specifically, 2 lines of it?

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Hm. There's an idea. =P

So I was pondering a while ago while playing Sonic Generations that while Classic Sonic has the existing GHZ Adventure as a text adventure game, no-one's done anything for Modern. Let's fix that!

SONIC THE HEDGEHOG IN: GREEN HILL ZONE ADVENTURE 1.10 - GENERATIONS EDITION

New features:

* Play as Modern Sonic, with a brand new storyline!
* Modern Sonic has new moves available at his disposal that Classic does not - Boost, Slide and Homing Attack your way through the level!
* Quick Time Events (sort of)!
* A hidden surprise for those who get to the end, as Modern, with 50 Rings...
* Some more Easter Eggs!
* For those who missed it the first time or just want to again, you can still play as Classic Sonic in the original 1.0 version of GHZ Adventure, with a couple of bug fixes since the last release.
* Also like the first release, the game still features no DRM whatsoever! In fact, GHZ:A is GPLv3!

Just like last time, you have a single goal - get Sonic to the end of the level and get the highest possible score. Collect rings, break open itemboxes, defeat badniks, fly into a massive pile of rings - it's all here, with a few tiny alterations to make it workable as a text adventure game.

I'd also like to thank ScarredSun for giving me the idea for the surprise, from her initial Retro wiki entry of Green Hill Zone Adventure. I'd actually thought about adding this even before the Modern idea came up - the extra character just adds a bit more content as a bonus. =P

SCREENSHOT!



Same installation notes as before:

* If you're on Windows and don't have Python installed, you'll want this one: http://overlord.digi...hza-110-exe.rar - download the RAR, extract the contents, and run the ghza.exe. Don't extract the zip that's inside the RAR - this will stop the interpreter working. It runs on Windows 7 with no issues I could see on the machine I tried it on - however if you're on an earlier OS you may need to install the Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable Package (x86) - there's a link on this page to the SP1 version, don't get that one. It contains the wrong version of MSVCR90.dll for this. I wouldn't bother with this unless you see a MSVCR90.dll error, though.

* If you're on Windows and DO have Python installed, are running Linux, or are a Macfag, you will want/need this one: http://overlord.digi...ca/ghza-110.rar - download, extract all, run ui.pyw. It's built against Python 2.6, also note you will need wxPython installed.